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eWork in Europe: Results from the EMERGENCE employer survey
Of the estimated 24 million establishments in the fifteen EU countries plus Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, nearly 12 million are already practising some form of eWork. This is one of the encouraging results from the EMERGENCE Europe-wide employer survey.
| The EMERGENCE definition of eWork | |||||||||
In the EMERGENCE project, we define as eWork any activity that involves the processing of information and its delivery via a telecommunications link that is carried out away from the main premises of an organisation. This might be carried out in-house (ie by an employee of the organisation) or outsourced (ie by a subcontractor). It may also be carried out either away from traditional office-type premises by an individual working in isolation (eg at home or from multiple locations) or in office-type premises by a group of workers working together in a shared space. This diagram illustrates the range of possibilities, grouped according to these variables. |
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in-houseThe survey, which covered over seven thousand establishments, captured information on a range of telemediated business services, making it possible to measure and map the use of a variety of different forms of eWork. Once the results had been weighted to make them representative of all European establishments, 49 per cent were found to be practising eWork. Figure 1 shows the breakdown by type of eWork.
| Fig 1: eWork in Europe, by type of eWork |
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| Notes: Weighted figures; per cent of establishments with >50 employees in EU (15) plus Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic Source: EMERGENCE European Survey, 2000 (IES/NOP) |
This shows that the stereotypical employee teleworker based solely at home is in fact one of the least popular forms of e-Work. Only one and a half per cent of establishments in Europe employ people to work exclusively from home in this way, although the proportion rises to over two per cent in the EU (15). It is much more common to use the new technologies to support multi-locational working by employees, already practised by one European employer in ten, a form of working much less likely to be associated with social isolation. As many again are using non-employees for this work. Nearly one employer in six (17.3 per cent) uses freelances to deliver some form of information service. Using a tighter definition of eWork, to include only work that is delivered by means of telecommunications, we still find 11.4 per cent of European employers are using ‘e-lancers’.
Turning to eWork carried out on office premises, we find that employers are already making significant use of IST technologies to carry work out remotely. Approximately one in 14 European establishments has a back office outside their own region. Bearing in mind that the ‘regions’ we are talking about here are large (NUTS1 level regions, which, in the case of smaller countries like Ireland, Portugal or Luxembourg, constitute the whole country), this represents a significant displacement of work. To these can be added a further one per cent of employers who make use of telecottages or telecentres as remote bases for their employees.
These forms of in-house teleworking are heavily outweighed, however, by the use of e-outsourcing as a mechanism for carrying work out remotely. Over half of all establishments (56 per cent) outsource at least one business service involving information processing. Restricting our definition only to those which use electronic means of delivery (‘e-outsourcers’), we find 43 per cent of employers making use of this practice. Much of this outsourcing is carried out within the region where the employer is based (34.5 per cent) but substantial numbers (18.3 per cent) are outsourcing to other regions within the same country, whilst 5.3 per cent are outsourcing beyond their national borders.
Call centres make up a significant proportion of this eWork. Whilst only 1.4 per cent of respondents had an in-house remote call centre (outside their own region with a direct telecommunications link) no fewer than 15 per cent use an outsourced call centre. In 11.1 per cent of cases, this involves a direct telecommunications link to the main office.
National variations
| Fig 2: eWork by country |
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| Notes: Weighted figures; per cent of establishments with >50 employees in EU (15) plus Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic Source: EMERGENCE European Survey, 2000 (IES/NOP) |
There is of course considerable variation between countries. Countries with high levels of eWork fall into two broad categories: advanced high-tech economies such as Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands, which make use of IST technologies for a wide variety of eWork practices; and countries in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe such as Italy, Spain, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, which have very high levels of outsourcing, sometimes rooted in economic systems which favour small firms or with a large informal economy. The new information technologies have clearly enabled establishments in these countries to develop electronically enabled subcontracting networks to a considerable extent.
The low apparent levels of eWork in Ireland, Luxembourg and Portugal are in part a result of the fact that these countries are each classified as a single region within the EU NUTS classification; this means that they cannot by definition be regarded as having remote back offices or outsourcing outside their own region but within their own country. It is the larger economies of Germany and France, and to a lesser degree, the UK, which, because of their sheer size, bring down the average prevalence of eWork within the EU. Perhaps because of the more strongly corporate models of industrial relations which exist in Germany and France, perhaps because there is a more highly educated in-house workforce to draw on and hence a lesser need to seek talent externally, there is a lower rate of take-up of eWork in these countries.
Functions involved in eWork
| Fig 3: eWork by function |
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| Notes: Weighted figures; per cent of establishments with >50 employees using any form of eWork, in EU (15) plus Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic Source: EMERGENCE European Survey, 2000 (IES/NOP) |
Six out of ten of the establishments using eWork use it for software development and support, which is the function most likely to be carried out remotely using a telecommunications link. The second most common telemediated function, at 38 per cent, is creative work, a category that includes design, editorial work, multimedia content generation and other creative activities. This is followed by management, training and HR functions at 20 per cent, and customer services at 19 per cent. Since sales activities have traditionally been carried out in a dispersed way, we did not wish to run the risk of categorising all travelling sales personnel as eWorkers, so the sales function was defined rather narrowly in our survey to include only sales activities carried out using a telecommunications link. Such telesales activities were reported by only six per cent of all eWork employers. However, this apparently low level is partly accounted for by the increasing pattern of integrating sales and customer service functions: many telesales activities have been subsumed into customer services departments. At nine and eight per cent respectively, data processing activities and finance and accounting services also play a significant role in eWork.
The supply side
An e-outsourcing relationship of course involves two parties. Our survey looked not only at the demand for outsourced telemediated work but also the supply side, at least insofar as this involves firms with more than fifty employees.
| Fig 4: the Supply of Outsourced eServices in Europe |
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| Notes: Weighted figures; per cent of establishments with >50 employees in EU (15) plus Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic Source: EMERGENCE European Survey, 2000 (IES/NOP) |
In all, over a fifth (21 per cent) of all larger establishments in Europe are engaged in supplying telemediated services. This suggests that such activities already play a significant role in the European economy. The function most likely to be involved (at 11 per cent) is customer services, perhaps a reflection of the rapid recent growth of outsourced call centres. This is followed by design, editorial and creative functions at 7 per cent, and software development and support at 6 per cent. Given the very high level of demand for IT services, the relatively low prevalence is a little surprising. Two factors may contribute to this: the strength of countries outside Europe in this sector, and the existence in the IT sector of a number of micro-businesses, either single freelancers or companies with fewer than 50 employees.
Subject to successful fundraising, EMERGENCE is hoping to carry out supplementary surveys of microbusinesses in the knowledge sector in order to fill out the picture of the supply of eServices captured in this survey. An initial survey has already been commissioned in Denmark.
Once again, we find major national differences in the supply of eServices, as can be seen from Figure 5. The very high levels in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic perhaps reflect the pattern of recent very rapid development, with a lack of in-house expertise in these areas in more traditional sectors. The presence of large numbers of branch offices of externally owned firms may also play a part. This subject will be further investigated in the EMERGENCE special study of accession states in Eastern and Central Europe, which will be completed in 2002.
Within the EU, the countries with the greatest concentrations of eService suppliers are the Netherlands at 30 per cent, Denmark at 22 per cent and Finland at 23 per cent. This reflects the well-developed technological base and strong information service sectors of these countries. The lowest level, at 6 per cent is in Greece, where it seems likely that many eServices may be supplied by individuals or microbusinesses too small to be captured within our survey, or within the informal economy. Luxembourg, and to a lesser extent France, also report low levels of establishments supplying eServices, at 8 and 9 per cent respectively. The reasons for this are less clear. Luxembourg, because of its extremely small size, may be buying its eServices in from neighbouring countries and have failed to establish its own national source of supply.
| Fig 5: Supply of eServices by country |
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| Notes: Weighted figures; per cent of establishments with >50 employees in EU (15) plus Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic Source: EMERGENCE European Survey, 2000 (IES/NOP) |
Regional specialisation
The EMERGENCE survey also makes it possible to see which regions specialise in which kinds of activity, from both the demand and the supply sides.
Table 1 gives the picture from the demand side for the most popular outsourced eService, software development and support. It shows the top ten regions named by our respondents as sources of outsourced eServices from outside their own regions.
| Table 1: top ten regions for software development and support | |||
| 1 | Poland | ||
| 2 | Hungary | ||
| 3 | Czech Republic | ||
| 4 | Spain: Noreste region | ||
| 5 | France: Bassin Parisien | ||
| 6 | France: Ile de France | ||
| 7 | Italy: Lombardia | ||
| 8 | Germany: Nordrhein-Westfalen | ||
| 9 | UK: London | ||
| 10 | Spain: Comunidad de Madrid | ||
| Source: EMERGENCE European Survey, 2000 (IES/NOP) | |||
The presence of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic in the top three positions bears out the supply-side picture: these countries seem to play a major role in supplying information services both to each other and to the EU. The other top regions are large, densely populated urban regions, characterised by historically strong service sectors.